


Do this for me

by diabolica



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dom Bedelia Du Maurier, F/M, Face-Sitting, Florence Arc, Hand Jobs, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Season/Series 03, Sub Hannibal Lecter, a surfeit of metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diabolica/pseuds/diabolica
Summary: There is a power differential between psychiatrist and patient. One that I'm well aware of, particularly with my own therapist. —Hannibal Lecter, SakizukeThe same can be said of marriage, if you do it correctly.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47
Collections: Hannibal Bingo





	Do this for me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my [Hannibal Bingo](https://hannibalbingo.tumblr.com) card, for the prompt "face-sitting". I, er, took the prompt quite literally.
> 
> Thanks and praise to [Caissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caissa/pseuds/Caissa) for beta-reading, i.e., helping me find the path when I was lost.

After he has tidied the kitchen for the night, Hannibal finds Bedelia seated in the living room, watching the fire intently. Unlike everyone he's met in the last twenty years, she needs no props: no tablet or phone, not even a book. How rare it is, he thinks, in the twenty-first century to meet a person who is perfectly comfortable to be left alone with their own thoughts. And he can see that she’s thinking deeply about something, but not _what_ she is thinking.

It makes him want to re-direct her attention.

He lays a hand on her shoulder. Without speaking, without looking up, her hand reaches up to cover his. He is touched; she doesn’t usually respond so quickly to his overtures. 

Emboldened, he leans down over the back of her chair, inhaling her perfume. Once, in Baltimore, that scent had educed in him a sense of tranquillity; even still it evokes hours he spent in her company, the sole focus of her attention. Now, in Florence with all things so altered, it elicits a new reaction. Her hair tickles his cheek as he seeks out her earlobe.

"Will you allow me to please you tonight?" 

A note of amusement in her voice. "And what have you done, husband, to earn the privilege?"

The word _husband_ , spoken in that dark, charming murmur, causes a warmth to spread beneath his skin. Just as Bedelia needs no props, he knows she needs no _one_ , something he’s always envied about her. Part of him is still pleasantly surprised that his stoic, self-reliant psychiatrist is willing to act the part of his wife, in public _and_ in private, if not on paper. She makes him work for it, certainly, but for that he values her indulgences all the more. 

His hands slide down her arms, possessive. He cannot help himself; the impulse to touch her is too strong. He kisses a trail from just beneath her ear to where her neck meets her shoulder, committing the fine texture of her skin to memory. 

"I made you a lovely dinner, didn't I? If you've any other appetites, I would like to satisfy them."

Gooseflesh has broken out over her arms. "Well," she says, "since you ask so nicely." She turns her head towards him, kisses him back, leaning into him and opening his mouth as if she’s pulling an oyster from a shell. He’s so hard already, anticipation thrumming with its own pulse. She breaks the kiss, gives him an almost playful look. "Go and wait for me then."

Bedelia disappears into the bathroom. Hannibal adjourns to the bedroom to undress.

He had half-expected her to make him beg. He wouldn’t have minded. The novelty of it appeals to him.

Once, back in Baltimore, Bedelia had a choice: accompany him, or walk away from him. He still isn’t entirely sure what he’d have done if she’d chosen the latter. But she chose to come with him, and she is here of her own free will. Which means she is free to leave at any time. He also has a choice: force her hand, or give her the incentive she needs to stay. It is tempting sometimes to remove all doubt. But she is not a songbird to be kept for his pleasure; she is a falcon who has chosen to live with him. 

The trick is to make the choice easy for her.

He doesn’t take it for granted, having passed through her Porta Sancta, because he knows the internal stumbling blocks she’s had to conquer. He may not share all of Bedelia’s professional scruples, but he knows they were important to her, that casting them off may be something she has to do in stages, therapeutically speaking. He is no ordinary patient; still she is careful of his well-being and unwilling to suddenly upend the balance they’ve established over the course of years. He can appreciate that, even as he burns to know all of her.

He settles himself on the bed and waits.

Now one lamp is lit, on the other side of the bedroom. Bedelia is half in shadow, unwilling to be fully seen. She is removing her jewellery: earrings, watch—but not her ring, he notes, pleased. She slips off her kimono, sloughs off her human skin. Underneath she is naked, though still fully armoured, if her expression in the mirror is anything to go by. 

Hannibal keeps his gaze averted. It is not his to question the mysterious ways in which she moves. If he wants her company, then he must let her lead. His own willingness to place Bedelia in control surprises him, though it probably shouldn’t. She has led him to places in his own mind that he needed to visit, has helped him to a better understanding of human connection. She can guide him now into her realm, her vaulted corridors and mirrored rooms. She has proven herself a vessel strong enough to bear his suffering; she can bear his vulnerability too.

She moves closer now. The bedclothes rustle as she stalks towards him on hands and knees. Through the open window he can hear the night sounds of Florence, foot traffic on the piazza. 

Bedelia sits beside him, reaching out to caress his neck, his chest. Her eyebrows draw together, pensive. "Are you ready?" she asks.

He nods.

She positions herself above him, her thighs taut on either side of his head. He pauses to brush his cheek against her supple skin, breathing in appreciatively as he does so. His hands reach up to trace her vertebrae, coming to rest on her spine just above her coccyx. His fingers press there, gentling her forward into his maw. Her response is swift and satisfying. She tilts her hips and offers him what he most desires in this moment.

He recognises the gesture for what it is: Trust.

This is how he shows his adoration: prone, penitent. This is how he loves her best: wet and grasping and drunk on her own power. Her scent—dark, animalic—in his nose and her warmth radiant. He notes her body’s reactions to his ministrations as carefully as he always monitored her emotional responses. Just as in the past his tears have excited her compassion and his joy her motherly indulgence, his body can now open a gateway to a pleasure Bedelia had long abjured.

Hannibal sets to work; he offers her the heat and hunger of his mouth. She yearns towards him; her tissues swell, blood hot just beneath the surface, and he imagines the exquisite torture she would inflict if this heat were wrapped around his cock. It’s too much, for him and for her, and he backs off as he feels the beginnings of a flutter in her. He wants to draw this out, make it worth her while.

He offers his fingers and smiles to himself as she takes them in, pressing back against them and wordlessly asking for more. In this soft, cradled space he plants little wet kisses at random, exulting in the certainty that these responses, the unguarded noises she is making, the way her body is beginning to _yield_ , is his doing. Drinking her down, holding her there as she rides the ragged edge of her need is almost, _almost_ as good as having her turn to him and whisper, "Will you help me?"

He’s sorry to miss the spectacle of her expressions, sorry to be unable to watch desire chase itself across her face. He wants to see her undone, to unpick the stitches she has pulled so tight over her secret self. But he’ll take what she chooses to give. He has always been patient with her, and he can be patient still.

She is tightening now around his fingers; he presses against that sacred place inside and wraps his lips around her clit, drawing her into the dark. When he hears her muffled cry from above, he licks her gently through the last of it. He listens as her breathing subsides and tries to communicate with his fingertips against her back, with his open palms stroking her thighs, what he needs from her now.

He needs her.

Bedelia settles in beside him, still beautifully breathless, the length of her body pressed to his side. She wears a sleepy, sated expression that wakens something primitive in him, makes him want to roll her beneath him and _rut_. The thought is fleeting, the impulse quickly mastered because she has often said he is too impulsive, and he will show her otherwise. But Bedelia, always so discerning, must have noted some flicker of it because now her face registers a new alertness. A sudden imperious twist of her mouth, and then she softens. 

She smoothes his hair back from his forehead and says, "You did make a lovely dinner." 

A sour orange fish curry, paired with a chenin blanc that he knows she likes. It had required an afternoon’s hunting through Asian markets to source the ingredients. 

"I mentioned some time ago that I miss Thai food," she continues, her head tilted at an inquisitive angle that reminds him of days when he was merely her patient. Now, her voice is a low purr that he never heard in session. "You remembered."

He looks up at her, nods. She dips her head, her lips move along his temple in a soothing arc. His fingers thread themselves through her hair, urging her to turn her head. She relents and kisses him, a feathery brush of lips that leaves him wanting.

"You did it to please me." 

"Of course," he says lightly. Inwardly he is preening, but he has the sense not to let her see this time.

She smiles, an authentic smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes. He has counted and catalogued that smile’s every appearance in their relationship as it is so infrequent. Within his memory palace, a stone shatters the surface of a mirror pond. The ripples flood him, unsettle him. 

"I like that you want to please me." Bedelia kisses him again, this time open-mouthed, acquisitive, as if she means to consume him. It feels like a reward. "I find it very … gratifying."

Hannibal looks up at her. Light enters a darkened room through a gap in a heavy curtain. It feels like a triumph; it feels _intimate_. Unprepared, unmoored, in need, he reaches for her: his lodestar, his solace. A shuddering breath escapes him. 

"Shhh," she says, as if she knows. "It’s all right. I’m here." 

Her hand on the back of his head guides him, and her care becomes apparent as his mouth closes over her nipple. He pulls her closer. Eyes closed, he suckles, finding peace in her attention, a stillness he craves. She allows this, holds him steady; her heartbeat slows, he drifts.

He stretches, tangling his legs with hers and is reminded of his erection as it brushes against her. She chuckles darkly, indulgently. She reaches across him, retrieves a bottle from the bedside table. She repositions herself, lays her head on his chest. 

"I know," she says. "I know what you need." 

A sense of relief when, a moment later, her small sure hand, slick and cool, closes over his cock. His spine flexes. She has pared his body down to the most basic of needs: motion, release. The sound of Bedelia’s voice beckoning to him, saying, "Good. That’s it."

She works him steadily, allowing him none of the back and forth he gave her. Grip tight, unyielding. Which is what he wants. He wants it because she is giving it. Freely. Carefully. Because she knows. Because she _sees_. 

Lips pressed together in the half-light, he gives himself over to her. His hips rise up to meet her. A vertiginous slide opens before him, no handholds, only Bedelia. An agonizing twist as her palm glides over the sensitive head. 

Raising her head, she whispers, "Do this for me now, Hannibal. Let go."

And he does.

**Author's Note:**

> The falcon metaphor occurred to me after reading something Thomas Harris said in the introduction to _Red Dragon_. He talks about Dr Lecter and Clarice Starling, how they aren’t his to control but their own entities who follow their own natures: "There is a certain amount of courtesy involved. As a sultan once said: I do not _keep_ falcons—they live with me." 
> 
> I would love to know what you thought of this story (emojis and keyboard smashes happily accepted). :) I’m also on [tumblr](https://plain-as-pandemonium.tumblr.com/) if you’d like to say hello.


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